


The Sin of Pandarus

by a_t_rain



Category: The Duchess of Malfi - Webster
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-13
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-25 06:35:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2611925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_t_rain/pseuds/a_t_rain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daniel de Bosola follows orders.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sin of Pandarus

**Author's Note:**

> This is the fault of Nineveh_uk, who planted the idea of Ferdinand / Strong-Thighed Bargeman in my head, from where it refused to be dislodged.

_1\. Send Antonio to me; I want his head in a business._

“Bosola,” said Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, “do you remember that strong-thighed bargeman who ferried us across the river yesterday?”

“Yes. What of him?” Bosola stifled a qualm of misgiving. The Duke’s mind had been turbulent of late, and his humor capricious. The short winter days saw him call for some fresh diversion a dozen times and more, but nothing seemed to please him long except devising new torments for his imprisoned sister.

“Y’are the Provisor of the Horse.”

“Well?”

“Know you not that such a man is but another hot-blooded jade that lives to bear another’s weight, and joys in’t? Go, seek him in the rank and sweaty stable where he dwells. Give him this gold, and inform him...” Ferdinand’s lips curled upward in a feral smile. “... Inform him that I desire the labor of his body.”

It was an embarrassingly transparent command, but Ferdinand had never been good at the games of equivocation that courtiers played almost from their cradle. Bosola toyed with the idea of altering the message, candying over the Duke’s intent with sweeter words; but he decided it was not worth the trouble. Such phrasing was ornate enough for a laboring man to puzzle through, and in any case, it would be best if the wretch knew what the Duke wanted with him.

Still, the message confused Bosola. One could not serve seven years in the galleys without knowing that men did use other men in such a fashion, nor seven days at court without knowing that some of them preferred it – but he would have sworn the Duke’s inclinations lay in a different and altogether fouler direction.

_2\. Never rained such showers as these / Without thunderbolts i’ the tail of them._

A few discreet inquiries brought him to the bargeman, who did not live in a stable, but in a dark little inn by the riverside. Bosola bought him a cup of wine and repeated the Duke’s message.

The man looked at him and blinked. Bosola was not sure at first whether he understood, or even whether he were in his right wits.

“There’s gold for thee, Danaë,” he added.

The bargeman regarded the coin stolidly. “My name is Giovanni,” he said.

Bosola snorted. If the man was too dull to take his meaning, it was not his affair. “Think’st thou the duke cares to know thy name?” he asked contemptuously.

“I know he does not.” The man drained his glass and pocketed the money. “But I know the Duke by sight, and this is his image.”

Well, perhaps the man was not such a fool as he looked; Bosola, for all his learning, had been caught fast enough by that same gilded snare. They left the inn and walked on in silence toward the palace, two whores together in the frozen moonlight.

_3\. And yet these rogues / Have cut his throat in a dream._

After he had left the bargeman with Ferdinand, he listened at the keyhole. It was the habit of a politic dormouse to hoard any crumbs of knowledge that fell from courtiers’ tables, even if the courtier in question was his master and fed him on finer dainties. Every nobleman tired of his pets in time, and Bosola held fast to any intelligence that might give him an advantage when that day came.

He heard enough to gather that Ferdinand was playing the minion and not the master; but some men preferred _that_ , too.

He hid himself before they finished, and waited in the shadows as the bargeman slipped out of the palace.

When he entered the Duke’s chamber afterward, Ferdinand was sitting before the mirror, studying his face by the light of a single smoking candle. Bosola had often seen his sister the Duchess sit thus, before Ferdinand had thrown her in prison and stripped her of her womanish toys. It was not, he thought, a natural attitude for a man.

“Twins,” the Duke murmured. “Twins under the skin...”

Bosola coughed.

“Ah, Bosola. Pardon me; I almost think you do not walk, but creep through the palace like a snake. I pray you, take this poniard.”

“I think you hand your poniard about too freely,” said Bosola. “‘Twould be more mindful of your safety to keep it under your own cloak.”

The Duke roared with laughter. “That was well said, Bosola; I have oft said that I had rather have thee about me than a hundred flatterers. But I do not mean to make a habit of this night’s business, and so I rest my safety in thee. Go, find that villain again and give him such another pricking” – he made an obscene gesture with the dagger – “that he may sleep in quiet.”

It was like Ferdinand, Bosola thought as he took the poniard in his hand, to pick up on the figurative meaning of his words and miss the literal. A duke’s blood flowed as freely as a peasant’s, and it was not – though it was treason to say so – worth any more. He might do it – thus –

Ferdinand turned abruptly and looked him in the face, and Bosola made haste to pretend he had only been trying the dagger’s weight. 

“And when thou hast done,” said Ferdinand smoothly, “sheathe it in thy bosom ... the tale, I mean.” He rose and took a purse of gold from the cabinet, and tossed it to Bosola.

“A thrifty prince,” Bosola muttered under his breath, “to pay but one fee for two offices, panderer and executioner.”

_4\. Mine is another voyage._

He found the bargeman walking by the river. It was a moment’s work to kill him. The man did not even cry out.

Bosola contemplated the dead man. The wretch had been about his own height, and he thought he could handle a barge as well as any man; had he not served seven years in the galleys? He might strip off the rags from the corpse and change them for his own finery, and the Duke would be ne’er the wiser.

He might. But what fool would make such an exchange? Did not his long service deserve some better reward than sweat and misery?

Nay; he had gold in his pocket, and the Duke had entrusted him with his father’s poniard, which came from the royal treasury of Aragon and was worth no inconsiderable sum. A devil Ferdinand might be, but the devil was an easier master than want. Bosola had tried both, and he was in no doubt as to which he preferred.

He shoved the bargeman’s body into the river, so that it would not be found until it began to bloat and stink. There was a heavy splash, and a widening circle of ripples for a minute or tow, and then only the soft rush of the water. All was as it had been before.

But as he wiped the blood from the dagger, he thought he heard the river whisper – and its voice was very like Antonio Bologna’s – _This hath a point to’t as well as a handle._


End file.
